Thursday, July 28, 2022

Sigma Foveon sensor will be ready in 2022

From PetaPixel:

Sigma’s CEO Kazuto Yamaki has revealed that the company’s efforts in making a full-frame Foveon sensor are on track to be finished by the end of the year. 


Sigma’s Foveon sensors use a proprietary three-layer structure in which red, green, and blue pixels each have their own full layer. In traditional sensors, the three pixels share a single layer in a mosaic arrangement and the camera “fills in” missing colors by examining neighboring pixels.

Since each pixel of a photo is recorded in three colors, the resulting photo should be sharper with better color accuracy and fewer artifacts.


The release had been delayed on at least two occasions in the past due to technical challenges, once in 2020 and again in 2021. The initial announcement about this sensor was made back in 2018. In February 2022, Yamaki indicated that the company was in stage 2 of testing, and the final third stage will involve mass-production testing.

5 comments:

  1. Is here datasheet for this generation? According wiki this relative old tech

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    Replies
    1. Its old tech, but unique, with amazing results when it works well (needs strong lighting). There is a very dedicated following of photographers as the image results cannot be replicated with "normal" sensors.

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    2. The only tanglible advantage it has over conventional sensors reduced aliasing, including false color artifacts (e.g. moire). The disadvantages are plentiful - low color accuracy, high read noise, low SNR especially for color images, low DR, large amount of data compared to information as the channels are very overlapping. The results can indeed pretty much be replicated with "normal" sensors - aliasing is the only real issue - unfortunately most manufacturers are nowdays opting for very weak anti aliasing filters.

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  2. Maybe I can finally give up film photography and go digital, fantastic news.

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    Replies
    1. Exactly, no matter how good demosaicing is, it will newer reach real pixel.

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